“Civil engineering is both a science and an art: as science
it includes the general principles of mechanics and
construction; shows how we may ascertain the strains to which a
structure is exposed; the dimensions and proportions which
should be given to its several parts so as to be able to resist
such strains without injury. As an art, civil engineering
shows how scientific principles may be applied to the
construction of works and how used and modified so as to meet
the difficulties which constantly arise in practice. The
civil engineer being concerned in almost every kind of
construction ought to be a highly accomplished man of science
and indeed there are few men in any profession who can command
so large an amount of scientific and practical knowledge as the
civil engineer.”

Cyclopædia of Useful Arts,
Ed. Charles Tomlinson (1852)

Designing and building a road, canal or railway is a matter of
civil engineering. What follows is a brief account of the
development of this profession during the age in which our
canals and the first of our public railways were built.

Throughout this period ― say 1760 to 1840 ― civil engineering
construction was accomplished by the labour of men and animals,
occasionally helped by gunpowder. Design was at first
empirical; only as the 19th century progressed did it acquire a
scientific foundation, while mechanical aids in the form of
steam engines to expel water and to provide motive power only
then began to appear in the workings (Robert Stephenson was
probably the first to use steam pumps on any scale when, in 1837,
he employed 13
of them ― capable of raising 2,000 gallons a minute up some
150ft ― in the Kilsby tunnel workings on the
London & Birmingham Railway). These factors must
be born in mind when considering the civil engineering of the
time and its remarkable achievements.

In Europe, prior to the 18th century,
‘engineers’
were almost exclusively men skilled in the construction of
fortifications, barracks, roads and river crossings for military
purposes. [1] Although engineering work
was also carried out for civil purposes, no identifiable
profession had grown out of it. It therefore follows that
there was no recognised professional training with associated
tests of competence, neither were there the forerunners of the
contracting firms that today undertake civil engineering design
and construction projects on a massive scale.

From the 1760s onwards, the success of our first canals in
transporting the materials and finished goods of the growing
Industrial Revolution gave rise to a demand for more of these
new load-carrying highways and for those capable of designing
and building them. In the absence of an established
profession, many of those who were to establish their
reputations in meeting this fast-growing demand came from trades
in which at least some of the necessary skills were inherent in
their work. The trade of the millwright was well
represented, which is understandable when one considers the
range of skills that millwrights needed to deploy in the course
of their work and which could also be applied to the
construction of canals. Designing milling machinery
required the ability to draw and read plans, while a knowledge
of mathematics and mechanics was necessary to calculate
loadings, gear ratios and driveshaft speeds. Making
machinery involved working with wood and iron; erecting
buildings, conduits and watercourses involved working with
brick, stone, iron and clay.

John Smeaton
(1724-92), one of the first recognised ‘civil
engineers’.

The best known civil engineers to emerge from the millwright’s
trade were James Brindley, famous for his involvement with the
Bridgewater and other early canal schemes, and John Rennie, who
besides being involved with numerous waterways acquired a
reputation as a bridge builder, with the old Waterloo, London,
Southwark and Vauxhall bridges to his credit. Less well
known was Thomas Yeoman, a waterway engineer and the first
President of the Society of Civil Engineers. From a
slightly later era came former millwrights Sir William
Fairbairn, inventor of the tubular bridge, and Sir William
Cubitt. [2] Cubitt, who was associated
with numerous waterway and railway schemes, received his
knighthood in 1851 for his role as consulting engineer for the
Crystal Palace, built to house the Great Exhibition. A
less laudable achievement of Cubitt’s was his invention of the
treadwheel, a form of human-powered engine cum punishment
device.

James Watt, whose steam engine came to drive many of the mills and
factories of the Industrial Revolution, became a canal surveyor
early in his career. Watt’s background was that of a
scientific instrument maker, in which craft he would have been
familiar with the design, construction and operation of
astronomical, navigational and land surveying instruments, such
as the theodolite. John Smeaton, famous for his
rediscovery of the secret of modern cement (lost since Roman
times) and for numerous bridges, canals, harbours and the third
Eddystone Lighthouse, also trained in this craft.

Numerous civil engineers trained as land surveyors, one of the
most notable being Thomas Brassey. Brassey was among the
most important civil engineering contractors in the world during
the 19th century, building railways in France,[3]
Italy, Belgium, Spain, Russia, India, Argentina and Australia.
Thomas Telford, first President of the Institution of Civil
Engineers,[4] originally trained as a
stonemason, becoming a civil engineer relatively late in life
when he was appointed county surveyor for Shropshire, and
Resident Engineer (under William Jessop) for the construction of
the Ellesmere Canal.[5] Telford first
established his civil engineering reputation with the
magnificent stone and iron Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, which
continues to carry the canal over the River Dee.

But in any profession, some notable members will emerge from
unusual backgrounds. For instance, James Barnes, who with
William Jessop built the Grand Junction Canal, was a brewer, a
trade that he continued while working as a canal engineer.
From where he acquired his civil engineering knowledge remains a
mystery. Sir Edward Banks raised himself from the humble
station of a day labourer to form a partnership with William
Jolliffe to become one of this country’s principal civil
engineering contractors.

――――♦――――

CIVIL ENGINEERING BECOMES A PROFESSION

For most of the canal-building era, [6] there was
no governing body to provide a forum for regular discussion, to
disseminate best practice, maintain a register of competent people,
and set standards and ethics for the profession. Thus, the
early civil engineers learned mostly by experience, supplementing
their on-the-job training by collaborating with each other.
The established practitioners also took pupils who became the civil
engineers of the future.

Take John Smeaton. Generally recognised to be the first
full-time ‘consulting engineer’, he remains one of civil
engineering’s heavyweights, the breadth and depth of his influence
being phenomenal. Smeaton collaborated with, among others,
James Brindley on site investigation for the Trent & Mersey canal,
with Thomas Yeoman on the River Lee Navigation, and with John Grundy
Jnr. in planning the Holderness Drainage scheme. And through
collaboration between his professional descendants, Smeaton’s
lineage comes down through the years. For example, a link can
be traced from Smeaton to our last great canal project, the
Manchester Ship Canal, which opened in 1894, just over a century
after Smeaton’s death:

Smeaton’s pupil, the great canal engineer William Jessop, worked
with Thomas Telford on the Ellesmere and Caledonian canals;

Thomas Telford associated with Sir William Cubitt on the Birmingham
& Liverpool Junction Canal (Telford thought highly of Cubitt to the
extent of leaving him a legacy);

Cubitt worked with Edward Leader Williams on the improvement of the
River Severn, Williams later becoming chief engineer to the Severn
Navigation Commissioners;

Williams trained his
son, Edward Jnr., who became Chief Engineer for the construction of
the Manchester Ship Canal.

All this means that the early civil engineers not only worked as
professionals, but collaborated in a way characteristic of a
profession. This was to lead, in 1771, to the founding of the
profession’s first association ― also the first engineering society
in the world ― the Society of Civil Engineers. Again,
Smeaton’s name comes to the fore as one of the seven founding
members, whose intention was that practising engineers should dine
together periodically so that they might get to know one another,
thereby avoiding potential hostility that might arise in their
public dealings. The Society met fortnightly at the King’s
Head Tavern in Holborn and encouraged “conversation, argument
and social communication of ideas and knowledge”.

Samuel Smiles, in his biography of Thomas Telford (1862), records
that the Society:

“. . . . was discontinued in 1792, in consequence of some
personal differences amongst the members. It was revived in
the following year, under the auspices of Mr. Jessop, Mr. Naylor,
Mr. Rennie, and Mr. Whitworth, and joined by other gentlemen of
scientific distinction. They were accustomed to dine together
every fortnight at the Crown and Anchor in the Strand, spending the
evening in conversation on engineering subjects. But as the
numbers and importance of the profession increased, the desire began
to be felt, especially among the junior members of the profession,
for an institution of a more enlarged character.”

These informal gatherings led, in 1818, to the formation of the
Institution of Civil Engineers, the chartered institution that now
governs the profession in the United Kingdom. [7] Thomas Telford occupied the President’s Chair from 1820 until his
death in 1834, and it was he who in 1828 was instrumental in
obtaining a Royal Charter. The older Society [8]
continues to this day, but mainly as a dining club of around 50
senior engineers and twelve ‘Gentlemen Members’, the latter
including HRH the Duke of Edinburgh.

――――♦――――

PROMOTER, ENGINEER AND CONTRACTOR

The Duke of Bridgewater was the only canal promoter to finance a
significant canal from his own resources; he also recruited, equipped
and managed his own workforce. The project having absorbed his personal
fortune, he then borrowed from whoever he could, even from his
tenants and those from whom he purchased land.

For a single promoter to finance and construct public infrastructure
on any scale and manage the entire works directly was not
feasible in the long run, and the canals that followed the Bridgewater were
financed by public subscription. Each scheme’s shareholders put
up the cash, which the canal company might then supplement by raising loans.
The work was then divided into parcels, put out to tender and
undertaken by contractors. Broadly speaking, this meant that
three parties became involved: the scheme’s promoters, whose concept
it was, who paid for the work and who took ownership of the finished
product; the chief engineer, whose role was to translate the
promoter’s concept into a feasible design; and the contractor(s),
who translated the chief engineer’s design into reality using
equipment and a workforce possessing a range of constructional
skills.

Of course these lines of demarcation did not mean that each worked
in isolation of the others, rather to the contrary. A scheme’s
promoters often took a keen and understandable interest in the
mounting cost of the work and the date at which the completed
project could be expected to earn revenue. The chief engineer
dealt with tenders submitted by contractors for the work to be
carried out, supervised the progress of a construction contract,
monitored the quality of the contractor’s work and arbitrated in any
disputes between contractor and promoters. The contractor(s)
endeavoured to undertake the specified work at a profit. There
were even cases when engineers acted as contractors, and vice-versa
as circumstances dictated. [9] Negotiations between the three parties
[10]
often concerned requirements that
changed in the course of the contract, the quality of the
contractor’s work, overdue payment, and the numerous unanticipated
problems that were (and remain) bound to arise in the course of any
large-scale civil engineering project. Sometimes one party
interfered in the role of the other, for civil engineering was a
young profession and many promoters considered themselves as capable
as their chief engineer. Thus, John Smeaton rebuking the
promoters of the Forth & Clyde Canal by whom he was then employed as
their chief engineer (1768-73):

“If, instead of making plans, I am to be employed in answering
papers and queries, it will be impossible for me to get on with the
business . . . . All the favour I desire of the proprietors is, that
if I am thought capable of the undertaking, I may go on with it
coolly and quietly . . .”

Reports of the Late John Smeaton, FRS
(1812)

Engineer and proprietors sometimes came into conflict over who
should select the assistant engineers and the contractors for the
work, the chief engineer taking the view that such tasks should not
be left to laymen. In situations such as these the views of
the promoters sometimes prevailed, but where they were confronted by
a strong and highly competent personality, like Brunel or Robert
Stephenson, the chief engineer’s view held sway. A story is
told about Sir John Hawkshaw [11] who, attending a
promoters’ meeting, was faced with a refusal to pass for payment a
certificate issued by him as chief engineer on the basis it exceeded
estimate. When silence eventually fell on the meeting he said,
quietly, “Excuse me! What John Hawkshaw signs, you pay”
― and that was the end of the matter.

Sir John Hawkshaw inspecting the works
on the Severn Tunnel (1887).

――――♦――――

THE CHIEF ENGINEER

In the early canal projects, the chief engineer’s activities were
confined to the works where, among other things, he was expected to
perform the roles of manager and agent for the promoters, acting on
their behalf (sometimes under their direction) in the purchase of
building materials, the hire of labour, handling land purchases, and
placating landowners and others with grievances caused by some
aspect of the work, a common problem being damage caused to local
roads by the heavy increase in site traffic.

As the building of the canal network progressed, eventually leading
into the railway era, so developed the
civil engineer’s role, with chief engineers coming to form a small
but distinguished group employed in consulting, designing, directing
works and giving evidence before parliamentary committees . . .
.

“One of the principal exhibits of a Civil Engineer’s talent and
resources is displayed in the Committee Rooms of the Houses of
Parliament, in his examination as a Witness to prove the
practicability or the contrary of proposed Public Works, comprising
the numerous Railways, Canals, &c. throughout the kingdom. And
as the same individual has frequently to advocate and support
totally opposite systems and contingencies, upon different
undertakings, much ingenuity is consequently displayed on these
occasions ― for instance, where an Engineer appears as a Witness in
favour of a Line of Railway with very favourable Gradients, his
answers to the questions are always full and explicit, and he states
boldly, without fear of contradiction, the great advantages of a
level railway, compared with an undulating line, containing long and
steep inclinations thereon; but he is not so communicative
respecting the means which are taken or the sacrifices which are
made to obtain this advantageous run of levels.”

Railway Practice, S. C. Brees, C.E. (1839)

. . . . and often performing two or more of these roles
simultaneously. Much of
the administrative work was taken over by the company’s Secretary
(sometimes called the Clerk) and Solicitor ― particularly the former
― while the chief engineer came to sit at the head of a team of
engineering assistants. On complex projects, chief engineers
were sometimes engaged full time on the works, examples being Marc
Brunel on the Thames Tunnel and (by the railway era) George
Stephenson on the Liverpool & Manchester Railway, while on the
London & Birmingham Railway, Stephenson’s son Robert . .

“. . . almost lived on the line, and the first occasion on which
he visited the portion in question, after the contracts were let,
accompanied by the Secretary and by four or five Directors, was the
twelfth time that he had walked the whole distance from London to
Birmingham.” [12]

Personal Recollections of English Engineers,
F. R. Conder (1868)

Robert Stephenson
(1803-59), civil engineer.

But in general it became rare for a project’s chief engineer to be
on site permanently; instead, his role became one of laying out the
route of the canal or railway, designing its main engineering
features and preparing the necessary plans and specifications.
He would then hand over the designs to a resident engineer who,
acting in the client’s interest, supervised the execution of the
designs with assistant engineers under him to supervise the building
contractors on sections of the work. Periodically the chief
engineer would visit the works to review progress and deal with any
problems that were too complex for the men on the spot to resolve.
This management structure, which reached its maturity under Telford
on works such as the Caledonian Canal, would be familiar to British
civil engineers today.

A common class of problems that gradually fell to the chief engineer
to resolve were disputes involving some aspect of the contract.
Here, the chief engineer came to be regarded as Arbiter, a role in
which his independence from the scheme’s promoters, shareholders and
contractors was important in establishing confidence in his
judgement. As the great civil engineer John Rennie Snr.
put it:

“Engineers should be entirely independent of these connections ―
not dabblers in shares [13] ― and free
alike of contractors and contracts.”

Lives of the Engineers
(Vol. 2), Samuel Smiles (1862)

John Rennie Snr.
(1761-1821), civil engineer.

Robert Stephenson appears to have become a past master at
arbitration, much to the dismay and financial loss of our learnèd
friends:

“From the time of construction of the London & Birmingham Line,
when he acted so frequently as arbitrator between the company and
their numerous contractors, Robert Stephenson was constantly
referred to in the disputes of business men. He was no good
friend to lawyers. The amount of litigation he prevented by
amiable counsel would almost justify his memory being held in
abomination in Chancery Lane.”

Life of Robert Stephenson,
J. C. Jeaffreson (1864)

And so the more successful chief engineers came to be paid at daily
consultancy rates [14] for the time they actually
spent on the work and they would, at any time, have numerous
projects of different types and in various stages of progress around
the land. In an age when travel was slow and difficult, much
of their time was thus spent traversing a wide area and, in the case
of canal and railway projects, the entire length of the works
themselves.

At the opposite end of the hierarchy to the chief engineer were his
‘pupils’, in effect apprentices. From the earliest days of
civil engineering, the established practitioners took pupils, the
term being seven years. There were no suitable university
courses until well into the 19th century and even books on the many
aspects of civil engineering did not become generally available
until the 1800s. Pupils learned by experience, generally under
the direction of their master, but it was not unusual for one chief
engineer to ‘lend’ a pupil to another, who happened to be short of
an assistant to undertake some mundane task:

“The younger men, unable to front a public meeting or a board of
directors, were in demand everywhere for field work. Engineers
who had pupils to spare, lent them to one another, or let them out
on terms of hire agreeable to all parties. Thus the scene of
recollection may readily change from the busy hive of workmen, that
filled the great open ditch of the Euston extension [London and
Birmingham Railway], to the Derbyshire moors, the Essex corn-lands, or the
Norfolk fens.”

Personal Recollections of English Engineers,
F. R. Conder (1868)

Francis Conder, a pupil of Charles Fox, [15]
continues by recounting his experience of being ‘lent’ to John
Braithwaite, chief engineer of the Eastern Counties Railway, to
undertake some surveying. And so Conder set off for the
fen-lands and to the rigours of overland travel in the pre-railway age:

“After receiving a decorous lecture, as to the exactitude
requisite, both in the discharge of his [Conder’s] scientific
work and in the control of the expenditure he was about to incur, he
set off on the exploration of a portion of this line furnished with
level, staff, chain, Ordnance tracings, written instructions, and a
very moderate sum of money. Desirous to give full obedience to
the excellent advice which he had received with some awe, he engaged
a place on the outside of the mail [stagecoach]. With
the advance into Essex the evening mist thickened into rain, and the
journey was not half accomplished before the wet began to find its
way through the ‘warranted water-proof’ cap which formed part of the
strictly limited wardrobe with which, as usual with most
inexperienced travellers, he thought it convenient to travel.”

Arriving at his destination wet through, Conder was about to
discover that learning by experience was not confined to stagecoach
travel, for he found the area to be surveyed under water:

“On approaching the coast, with the purpose of identifying the
few unintelligible lines by which the tracings of the Ordnance
Survey (for the real map had not been forwarded with the
instructions) indicated the localities to be traversed by the
parliamentary section [the line of the railway], not a single
boundary or division was discernible. A long perfectly
straight road ran from the verge of the fens proper to the bridge
separating that district from the sea-port terminus. . . . the road
in question was not shown in the tracings, and the fens were under
water. One broad, unbroken sheet of inland lake was all that
was presented to the eye.”

On reporting this to the chief engineer, he received the following
instruction, short and to the point: “Set so-and-so to run his
level along the road from Yarmouth to Acle, and ****** the Fens!”

――――♦――――

THE CONTRACTOR

If honest ― and some were not ― the civil engineering contractor
endeavoured to complete the specified work within the time, cost and
quality requirements laid down in his contract with the promoters.

The first contractors were roving gangs of labourers who undertook
excavations and other tasks at piecework rates, performing the work
with their own equipment and sharing the proceeds among themselves
in whatever manner they pleased, assuming that the ganger had not
made off with them as sometimes happened.

The practice for letting small contracts in this way continued, but
in 1767 a significant development took place when a partnership was
formed between John Dyson and James Pinkerton, who set up as
earthwork contractors and before long were operating on a national
scale. A further step was taken in 1788, when John Pinkerton
took on a contract for constructing the entire Basingstoke
Canal, [16] thus marking the beginning of the
‘general contract’ system. However, Pinkerton acquired a
reputation for dishonesty and poor quality work, and became no
stranger to complaints, rescinded contracts and litigation. As
contractor for the Birmingham to Fazeley Canal, he even went so far
as to build a tunnel at Curdworth where a cutting had been
specified! Despite his failings, when he died in 1813 he left
an estate valued at £7,500.

Thomas Brassey
(1805-70), civil engineering contractor.

Today, there are large, well-established contracting firms and
industry standard contracts [17] and arbitration
procedures for public infrastructure projects based on a great many
years of experience. But in the canal and the railway-building
eras there was little experience on which to base large-scale
contracting, resulting in tenders based on guesswork ― sometimes
inspired, sometimes not ― about how much a gang could excavate and
bricklayers build in a given period. If the contractor’s
estimate erred sufficiently on the side of caution, while remaining
competitive, he might earn a fortune; and some did. It is said
that more cash passed through the counting house of the great
Victorian railway contractor Thomas Brassey than through the
treasuries of half a dozen European principalities. Said to be
self-contained and self-sufficient, Brassey had the gift of being
able to cost work quickly in his head and then live contentedly with
whatever the consequences might be. These were mainly
unforeseen engineering difficulties and poor cash flow due to
promoters being tardy in settling their accounts, but rising labour
costs in the course of a long contract could reduce or eradicate the
profit margin. Without adequate contract terms to cover such
events, the work might be skimped in an effort to contain rising
costs while problems might also leave unpaid gangs and a bankrupt
contractor. [18] In this situation, and in
the absence of finding another suitable contractor, the resident
engineer was left to complete the job.

Eventually men of outstanding ability arose from these gangs and
other sources that had the necessary personalities and experience to
organise and direct large operations, and they in turn gradually
gained the confidence of financiers who were prepared to back their
activities. Frederick Williams, writing in 1852, summed up the
financial burden that lay upon the civil engineering contractor, and
for which he required capital:

“In the best-managed contracts, the time for completion, and the
fines for exceeding that period, are stated; with the condition that
all payments are subject to the engineer’s approval of the work.
The contractor finds tools, labour and materials, gets out all
foundations, excavations, centreings, pumping apparatus,
scaffolding, fencing and other requisite materials of every
description, according to the specifications, plans and drawings,
and the instructions that he may from time to time receive from the
engineer.”

Our Iron Roads, F. S.
Williams, (1852)

While much of the early work continued to be undertaken by numerous
small contractors, the general contractor gradually came to
dominate. Two of the firms that rose to early prominence were
those of Hugh McIntosh and Edward Banks (from 1807, Jolliffe and
Banks). Both began in the 1790s on small canal contracts, but
eventually grew to become capable of handling several large works
simultaneously, employing a site ‘agent’ (the counterpart of the
resident engineer) to oversee each contract. Jolliffe and
Banks grew into one of the main construction companies of the era,
their portfolio including Waterloo Bridge (1817), Southwark Bridge
(1819) and the New London Bridge, which was opened by King William
in 1831. Banks was knighted in 1822.

During the railway building era, the partnership of Peto, Brassey
and Betts were both promoter and contractor of the Victoria Dock ―
the first London docks to be served by rail ― and the London,
Tilbury & Southend railway, which the partners ran on a 21 years
lease after they had built it. Thus were sown the seeds of
today’s constructional industry.

――――♦――――

THE WORKFORCE

The promoter, engineer and contractor were, between them, one
component in bringing a new canal or railway to fruition.
Theirs was the project’s concept, design and management, and in
their own way each carried an element of risk. The promoter
and contractor had a direct financial stake in the project ― would
their particular interest in it yield an adequate profit? And
in the case of engineer and contractor, the risk to their
professional reputation of failure would inevitably impact on their
future earnings.

A construction project’s other and equally essential component was
its army of skilled and unskilled workmen. Digging cuttings,
forming embankments and excavating tunnels ― not to mention the
construction of bridges, locks, aqueducts and viaducts ― required
substantial numbers of men with a wide range of skills.
Collectively, these men became known as ‘navvies’ [19]
and they moved with their families to work on engineering projects
wherever there was a demand for their labour. Although many
were escaping poverty (and later the famine) in Ireland, contrary to
the oft-held belief that the navvies were Irish, [20]
they came from all parts of the British Isles and even from Europe.
Out of their harsh working conditions and communal living there
gradually evolved a lifestyle, culture and even a language.
They also acquired a reputation for hard living, hard drinking
(alcohol probably providing a temporary release from the toil and
privation of their daily lives) and fighting, which often led the
local communities within which they worked to regard them as
degenerate and a threat to the social order.

Although the navvies’ drink-fuelled rioting was not that uncommon,
killings were. In his book Navvyman (Coracle Press,
1983), Dick Sullivan describes the outcome of one such incident, [21]
the hanging, by the side of the Edinburgh-Glasgow railway track, of
two Irish members of a navvy gang who, in 1840, murdered an English
ganger:

“Police and soldiers of the 58th Foot (later the Northamptonshire
Regiment) drove up from Glasgow in omnibuses to arrest the whole
gang. Over the next few days they were driven in noddies from
the Bridewell to the Sheriff’s Chambers in Stockwell Street for
questioning. In the end, James Hickie, Dennis Doolan and
Patrick Redding were brought to trial. Hickie was transported,
the others hanged.

“Doolan and Redding shambled to the gallows, as ungainly in their
shackles as quadrupeds made to walk upright, until the chains were
struck from their ankles at the foot of the gibbet. A bishop
prayed for them. Then there was the black hood, then the
noose, then the drop that broke their spines with a loud crack in
the bright May air. A young soldier, pale as the hanging
corpses, blacked out and fell.”

Strikes for more pay, which occurred from time to time, were
sometimes met in a robust manner. During construction of the
Wolverton Embankment on the Grand Junction Canal, a demand for
higher wages met with this directive from the Board to the site
engineer . . . .

“ . . . . to discharge at all risqué these offenders, and to use
his utmost endeavours to bring them to Justice, and to call on the
Magistracy and Yeomanry of this County to repress and punish all
acts of Outrage and Violence and an illegal conspiracy or
combination for increase of wages.”

GJCC Minute Book, 5 May, 1801.

But such a response is hardly surprising in an age when a
‘combination’ of protesters was to lead to the Peterloo Massacre.

Despite their way of life, it was the navvies who carried the
gruelling physical burden of construction work, usually in appalling
conditions, with a life spent at other times (when not on the
‘tramp’ between jobs) living in rough timber and turf huts alongside
the bridges, tunnels and cuttings on which they worked. It was
inevitable that such conditions would foster disease, and outbreaks
of cholera, dysentery and typhus were not uncommon. Sometimes
navvies were able to lodge in nearby towns and villages, but even
where suitable accommodation lay nearby, their reputation for
thieving and not paying the rent made them undesirable tenants.

Of this community, the ‘skilled’ element comprised the masons,
bricklayers and blacksmiths. The products of the masons’ and
bricklayers’ crafts are well preserved in their many surviving stone
and brick bridges, viaducts, etc., alas, now sometimes abandoned.
As for the blacksmiths, they sharpened the picks and chisels, and
hammered out new tools from wrought-iron. They also shod the
horses, fettled the wagons and ― as the nearest to a mechanic on
site ― kept the pumps in working order.

It is, perhaps, inaccurate to refer to the other element as
‘unskilled’, for it took up to a year to turn a common labourer into
a navvy capable of excavating 20 tons of earth in a day. It
was they who dug the thousands of miles of our canals and railways
using the standard tools of their trade, the pick, the shovel and
the wheelbarrow, helped along by horse and cart. When not
digging, other tasks that formed part of a navvy’s typical day were
rock blasting (using black powder), spoil tipping, puddling,
ballasting and laying railway track. For this they were
comparatively well paid, a good navvy earning up to 30 shillings a
week, three times the wage of an agricultural labourer. But it
was dangerous work and the risk of accidents was an accepted part of
the job, especially when blasting rock or building tunnels (by
candlelight), which were vulnerable to collapses and to gas
explosions. The contractors cared little for the wellbeing of
their men, who were poorly trained and often poorly supervised;
driven by the principle that ‘time costs money’, speed rather than
safety was their main concern. It was said that a navvy
working on the construction of Woodhead Tunnel during the 1840s was,
as a percentage of the workforce, at greater risk of injury than a
soldier at the Battle of Waterloo.

When the canal and railway-building eras eventually ended, there was
more work for the navvies, especially during the Victorian period
with its impressive record of constructing new docks, dams, roads
and public buildings. British navvies also acquired a good
reputation as a workforce abroad, many going on to work on European
railway projects where their capacity for unremitting toil earned
them twice the pay of the indigenous labourers. Some went
further afield to North America, were high wages attracted many
Irish navvies to the construction of the Erie Canal in New York
State and to similar civil engineering projects. Many later
found jobs in South Africa, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

Essentially, the navvy was a short-lived product of our industrial
expansion and engineering achievement. Just as canals and
railways were vital to the progress of our Industrial Revolution, it
should not be overlooked that the work of the navvies ― shifting
millions of tons of soil and rock from one place to another ― was
also crucial to the development of Britain as an industrial nation.

The term ‘civil engineer’ first appeared in Mortimer’s Universal
Director in 1763 in which Smeaton and Yoeman are both listed as
‘Surveyor and Civil Engineer’.

2.

Not to be confused with the civil engineering contractor, William
Cubitt (1791-1863).

3.

In France, the entire Western Railway from Paris to Rouen and Le
Havre was paid for with British capital, engineered by Joseph Locke,
built by Brassey and supplied with locomotives and most of its
components by British manufacturers. Overall, between 1830 and
1871, Brassey is estimated to have built 5% of the world’s railways.

4.

The Institution of Civil Engineers was formed in 1818.

5.

Now the Llangollen Canal.

6.

1760 to 1840.

7.

Originally the ICE represented all branches of engineering, but as
specialism developed, other institutions were formed, such as the
Institutions of Mechanical (1847) and Electrical Engineers (1871).

8.

Renamed the ‘Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers’ in 1830.

9.

These were usually in circumstances where the contractor had failed
financially or had been dismissed, and the work was taken over
directly by the engineer; or in the other case, where a contractor
had taken on a contract to construct an entire project. In
civil engineering today, the . . . .

“. . . . basic interaction between Engineer and Contractor, for
example, has mutated over the last hundred and fifty years from
‘master and servant’ to a simple collaboration between two
specialist contributors. The boundaries of the traditional
interactions have also moved in response to the same pressures to
improve. In earlier times, for example, contractors made none of the
decisions about what was to be built and all the decisions about how
it was to be built. Now we have developed operational and commercial
relationships which will enable the boundary between design and
construction to be placed anywhere that preferences might dictate on
a particular project and even varied between different parts of the
same project.“

. . . . which sometimes became acrimonious and ended in litigation.
Brunel’s dictatorial approach to contractors resulted in many
disputed claims being taken to court, the most complex taking 29
years to settle ― in the contractor’s favour.

11.

Sir John Hawkshaw FRS (1811-91), English civil engineer.

12.

. . . while the ever-dedicated Brunel is said to have walked the 200
miles of the Great Western Railway while surveying the best route
for that line to follow.

13.

Rennie felt it essential that a chief engineer’s independence could
only be achieved if he had no financial stake in the undertaking.

14.

Telford was paid five guineas a day as chief engineer on the
construction of the London to Holyhead Road (now the A5); full time
assistant engineers on the same project received a salary of around
£200 per annum.

15.

Later Sir Charles Fox, civil engineer and contractor, at that time a
sub-engineer of the London & Birmingham railway.

16.

Completed in 1794, the canal connected Basingstoke with the River
Thames at Weybridge via the Wey Navigation.

17.

It was only after World War II. that the Institution of Civil
Engineers and the Federation of Civil Engineering Contractors agreed
on standard conditions. In 1945 they adopted a standard form of
contract modelled on that used by the Metropolitan Board of Works,
and originally developed by Sir Joseph Bazalgette for constructing
the major sewer projects and the Thames embankments in London during
the 1860s.

18.

An example was Thomas Townshend, contractor for the Tring railway
cutting on the London & Birmingham Railway. In 1837, he was
caught by an increase in labourers’ wages that left him bankrupt.

19.

The term ‘navigator’ initially applied to both boatmen and
labourers. It was coined in the late 18th century in Britain
when numerous canals were being built, which were also known as
‘navigations’. However, the name ‘navvy’, denoting a labourer
employed in the construction of a canal or railway, does not appear
until the 1830s (OED).

20.

Mostly true of the 20th century navvy until recently, when Eastern
European labourers came to Britain in considerable numbers.